a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Stockton-to-Malone’s last moments together on the court

Been going through some old stuff lately (since there’s nothing else to do; seriously…do you realize we’re not even at the halfway point of the off-season yet? I feel like this time, right now, has got to be the most unhappening, boring, deathly-silent, part of the summer. And then I go and look at the summer calendar (over there on the right) and see we have the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in ten days and the start of the Worlds later this month, and absolutely nothing between September 13 and Media Day, which usually falls around October 1st. That’s 50 days of nothingness. What am I going to do with myself? How am I to survive? /end rant)

So anyway, I was going through some old stuff and came across this:

Stockton’s last game was a playoff affair at Sacramento and Sloan took out Karl Malone and Stockton with five minutes left.

They’d been a sensation, the epitome of the pick-and-roll for 19 seasons but would exit together as fans applauded in reverence.

Later, on the phone with his father, Stockton told his dad the gesture at that juncture took him by surprise.

Jack asked why his son didn’t wave or something. “It’s all right to do that, you know.”

Video of the moment described above, a.k.a. Stockton-to-Malone’s last moments on the court together (Jazz fans, get your tissues/sleeve ready. Watching this makes me choke up unfailingly. I will always, always appreciate Kings fans for what they did):